Missouri Gets Top Grades in Denying Women Healthcare

​Thanks to Roe v. Wade, the law of the land in this country is that abortion is legal. However, plenty of states are enacting laws that chip away at a woman's right to have the procedure. And in a piece yesterday on AlterNet.org, Amanda Marcotte ranked the ten worst states in the nation for blocking access.

We're No. 7!

Yay? (No. Not yay.)In the piece, Marcotte notes that the Show-Me state has been graded F by NARAL,
the national pro-choice advocacy outfit, for all twenty years that they've
been issuing such grades. There are abortion providers in only four percent
of the counties here, which means many women have to travel great
distances to get abortions.

And, as we reported yesterday, the legislature is working on placing more barriers between women and medical care. A bill was amended
on the floor yesterday that would allow pharmacists to refuse to fill
prescriptions for contraception if they have moral objections to doing
so.

Riding on that law is a measure that would make non-surgical abortions
much more difficult to complete: Instead of one visit to a doctor for
the first dose of abortion pill RU-486, it would require women to have
an exam 24 hours before taking the first dose and to take both doses
directly from a physician -- who, by the way, must also have surgical
privileges at a hospital within 30 miles of the site giving the pills
and has to carry punitive levels of malpractice insurance.

It
also requires the doctor to give a woman a verbal and written warning
that RU-486, while commonly used for abortion, isn't FDA approved for
abortion. (Off-label prescription is a fairly common practice when a
medicine is used for something other than what it's officially approved for.) The
warning states that the drug isn't approved for abortion, but it also
urges women to "Please strongly consider other alternatives to abortion
before you take any of these drugs."

Top "honors" went to South Dakota, which only has a single Planned Parenthood
clinic that provides abortions. A new law requires doctors to perform
the surgery at the clinic, which means, for most of them, an airplane
flight. And with a new requirement mandating a meeting between patient and doctor three days before the procedure, that's a lot of frequent
flier miles.

Other states in the rogue's gallery are Arizona, which bans abortions
that are "based on race or gender," which is problematic because it's difficult to prove and gives men ammunition to sue doctors. Indiana
also makes the list, since Representative Eric Turner testified that
women would capriciously lie about having been the victims of rape or incest in order to get
later-term abortions. Kansas, where they murder abortion docs, makes the list too.

The article is a gasper. Take a look, if you feel like getting pissed off.